Tag Archives: Initiative 594

James Olsen, candidate for Legislature in the 23rd Legislative
District, challenged me to fact check one of his videos. Actually,
he suggested two of them, but I’ve already addressed one and don’t
believe it merits more attention. Mr. Olsen disagrees with me.
That’s all I have to say about that.

The Olsen video I will address is his attempt to take down Initiative 594, which extends
the rules for existing background check requirements for federally
licensed gun dealers to gun shows and transactions between private
individuals. It also has some restrictions about temporary
transfers.

If you don’t like the message on Olsen’s video, available on
YouTube, you have to enjoy the Golden Earring song “Twilight Zone”
that provides the soundtrack. Band members might not agree with
Olsen, but I’m sure they appreciate the attention. We could start a
pool to find out whether and when a Content ID claim will mute the
entire video.

Horses Ass, the political
website for Washington lefties, has audio of a speech delivered
Aug. 23 at a “No on I-594” event in Silverdale that has supporters
of the measure outraged.

During his speech (the audio is below.) Brian Judy, A Washington
NRA official, criticized one of the measure’s financial backers
($385,000), Nick Hanauer. The initiative, if passed, would require
background checks for gun sales at gun shows and for those online.
It allows for some exceptions.

Judy draws his criticism from a piece Hanauer wrote in Politico
arguing that America needs to raise the wages of lower and middle
class Americans, that the working class is what creates rich
people, not the other way around. The following section reflects
much of Hanauer’s main argument.

… the problem isn’t that we have inequality. Some inequality
is intrinsic to any high-functioning capitalist economy. The
problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and
getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a
capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies
change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will
be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution.
And so I have a message for my fellow filthy rich, for all of us
who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up, people. It won’t
last.
If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this
economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us.

Judy makes the case that rich people like Hanauer want to take
our guns so that poor people will only have pitchforks when they do
rise up. They won’t have guns, because Hanauer wants them taken
away, apparently.

And then Judy expresses astonishment that any Jewish person
could believe that:

And in one of the last paragraphs he talks about his family
being run out of Germany by the Nazis. It’s like, How stupid can
they, you know? So he’s funding, he’s put a half a million dollars,
toward this policy, the same policy that led to his family getting
run out of Germany by the Nazis. You know, it’s staggering to me,
it’s just, you can’t make this stuff up. That these people, its
like any Jewish people I meet who are anti-gun, I think, “Are you
serious? Did you not remember what happened? And why did that
happen? Because they registered guns and then they took them. And
now you’re supporting gun con, you come to this country and you
support gun control? Why did you have to flee to this country in
the first place? Hello! Is anybody home here?” Yeah, it’s just, I
don’t know.

Cheryl Stumbo, a victim of the 2006 Jewish Federation shooting
in Seattle, is a sponsor of Initiative 594 and issued this
statement:

“The offensive rhetoric from a senior lobbyist at the
National Rifle Association is out-of-touch with what the vast
majority of Washingtonians want: a reasonable, productive
discussion of solutions to reduce gun violence in our communities.
Developing those solutions has been a major part of my life since
the attack on my co-workers and me eight years ago, and I am
honored to have been joined by other survivors of gun violence, gun
owners, hunters, law enforcement, and current and former NRA
members. We’ve come together because Washington state needs
everyone working together to be part of the solution to making our
communities safer – and fringe ideas like Mr. Judy’s are part of
the problem.”

The Jewish Federation of Seattle issued a statement, too, part
of which said:

“Eight years ago today, the Jewish Federation was the target
of a violent attack by an individual harboring dangerous falsehoods
about Jews – falsehoods that continue to exist on the fringes of
our society. It is deeply offensive for anyone to suggest that
Jewish supporters of gun violence prevention have ‘forgotten’ the
history of our people. For a representative of the National Rifle
Association, or any organization, to repeat the out-of-touch
falsehood linking gun violence prevention to Nazi Germany and the
Holocaust is not only an ignorant distortion but is exceedingly
dangerous.”